McCorkle Place ‘assigned’

            This year’s UNC senior class gift will be a nice addition to downtown — a tastefully appropriate sign marker for McCorkle Place, the  wooded grove that’s a beautiful natural front porch for the nation’s first public university.              The Class of 2006 hopes to raise $40,000 to design and place a marker monument  near the rock wall of the sidewalk boundary of the original campus. Unique to this campaign is the first-time personal participation of the University Chancellor. James Moeser has pledged $20.06 to the drive if 15 percent of the senior students contribute to it, $200.06 if 25 percent of them do, and $2,006 if 35 percent participate – a noble gesture to encourage this campus beautification. Last year’s senior class raised $50,000, so this modest goal appears quite achievable.             Classmates voted for this project over a painted mural on campus or a faculty endowment. While the design is yet to be decided it will definitely embody stone work to complement the campus border stone walls built over 150 years ago by UNC Prof. Elisha Mitchell.             A sign for McCorkle Place revives the question about its namesake. Samuel Eusebius McCorkle was the eldest of 10 children (and father of 10 himself) of Irish immigrant parents. He was born in 1811 on a farm near Salisbury. His scholarly inclination was whetted at Princeton and by a mentor, the Rev. Joseph Caldwell, first President of the University. At six-feet-one, with blue eyes and sandy hair, he was said to resemble Thomas Jefferson, whom he once met.             The Rev. McCorkle was chairman of the committee that planned the course of instruction for the new university. He gave the address at cornerstone laying rites for the first building on Oct. 12, 1793, and predicted that the wooded site would be the focus of “an elegant village ..with the conveniences of civilized society.” Surely the prophesy has come true.             An attractive condominium development across East Franklin St. from McCorkle Place will complement it at its completion in a few months. It was to be called McCorkle Place Condominiums – a logical historically-based name. But the bureaucracy of Chapel Hill, in all its inevitable wisdom, decided the Fire Department might be confused by such an across-the-street name, so the developer chose as a formal handle something totally undistinguished and  generic – “The Condominiums.”             By whatever designation, a McCorkle Place sign and an attractive residence across from it will be a visual credit to the neighborhood and community, and a benefit to strangers and home folk alike.